ORIGINALLY PUBLISHED IN LIMA NEWSLETTER JANUARY 1990
 
 
 
     ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^ MUSIC ??  
     ^^^^^^^^^^^^by Barbara (Mrs.^Charles) Good 
     ^^^^^Computer Widow Auxiliary, Lima Ohio User Group 
      
     While searching my brain for a beginning to this
article I feel that in all fairness I must tell you that I
do not have as much affection for computers as many of you.
I consider myself to be no more than semi-literate in
computerese.  I appreciate the work saving qualities of the
computer but do not fancy them in the way that my husband
does or that many of you do.  As is the case with many of
you I have limited time to spend on my hobbies and thus have
choices to make.  I have chosen to avoid involvement with
the computer except on a "strictly businss" level. 
      
     Realizing, however, that my previous statements might
arouse intense hostility in some of you more rabid computer
buffs, I hasten to confess that I am typing this on a
Smith-Carona personal word processor complete with memory,
disk drive, etc.  Now that I have your attention and have
also succeeded in the dreaded beginning-- on to the real
subject of this article. 
      
     I am light years away from calling myself a musician
but I enjoy listening to music and I even enjoy making a
little music on the various stringed instruments that I own.
One of my favorite instruments is the hammer dulcimer.
What!!^^Can it be that some of you are unfamiliar with this
old and venerable instrument?  Just in case there should be
such among you, I shall explain.  The hammer dulcimer is a
many stringed trapezoidal instrument that dates to about
800 or 900 A.D.^and is the forerunner of the piano.  It is
commonly played with two wooden hammers.  Now that you all
have that picture in your heads, lets talk about the problem
that leads me to write this article. 
      
     I have 58 strings on my particular hammer dulcimer.  I
also have two bridges, separating one set of strings from
the other.  It is conceivable therefore that I could, with a
little (considerable?) thought, use my dulcimer as a kind of
abacus.  It is not my intent, however, to do this.  Hammer
dulcimers are for making music, and there is no shame in
doing one thing well.  If I find a need to calculate, I will
procure an abacus, a slide rule, a calculator, or a plain
old pencil and paper.  The point is, my friends, that
dulcimers are for making music --defined by Webster as
any  pleasing  succession or combination of sounds-- and
computers are for doing the many things they do so well.
The pure tones produced by a computer in the guise of music
are anything but pleasing to my ears.  Those instruments
that have been invented for the express purpose of making
music --and a few others (consider the saw)-- produce a
number of harmonics in addition to the major (or first)
tone.  In other words when a dulcimer produces an "A" in
octave one (defined in this country as having a frequency of
440 hertz), the instrument will also produce tones of 880,
1760, etc.  These tones are called harmonics and add
immensely to our enjoyment of the music.  Perhaps this is
why the pure tones produced by the computer sound so strange
and unmelodic to my ear.  I'd honestly rather listen to a
door chime or a musical car horn.  I must also confess to a
certain amount of aggrevation present in the thought that
some computer hackers are out to prove that their computers
can do it all, undoubtedly including bathing the dog. 
      
     I realize that keyboards are computer controlled but
keyboards are also classified as musical instruments.  I
doubt their capacity to act as computers every bit as much
as I doubt the wisdom of assaulting my ears with "music"
produced by such as the TI99/4A.  I am not here for the
purpose of maligning your computers but please consider my
point and spare yourself and your loved ones the pain of
hearing Jingle Bells played by that master musician TI99/4A.
If you are one of the many musicians that has previously
limited yourself to the playing of the radio, that is
nothing to be ashamed of.  If you want to branch out a
little, that might be nice too, but do yourself a favor and
beg, borrow, or even purchase a musical instrument instead
of relying on the artistic ability of the TI. 
     .PL 1